


A Visit to Our Nation’s Crapital

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: 30 Rock
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4924183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Washington DC in August is a circle of hell. That’s true even when it doesn’t have a death grip on your gentleman friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Visit to Our Nation’s Crapital

It was official: there were many, many crappy things about Manhattan, including the rent and the buskers on the subway, but none of it was nearly as disturbing as the early August weather in Washington and the number of people — including Jack — who could walk in it wearing suits, ties, and dress shoes.

“Geezum, how do you LIVE here?” Liz asked, fanning herself with her guidebook to the National Portrait Gallery. Yes, she’d gone there just to look at Stephen Colbert’s portrait. No, she did not feel guilty, because why else would you go to the National Portrait Gallery? “This entire city is a vile, sweaty pit, and that’s not a political joke.”

“Actually, I’ve been assured by any number of natives and long-term residents that we’ve been having an absolutely benign summer and that if I think this is unpleasant weather, I should try a sojourn in Southern Virginia,” Jack replied with a small shrug.

“Ew,” Liz added, in case Jack didn’t understand that Washington DC in the summer was an unlivable outpost of hell. “Seriously, do you get in trouble if you take off your coat and tie?”

“Of course not, Lemon,” said Jack heartily. “But do you see those men over there? The ones in their retro-cool Aviators and smug, Brylcreemed haircuts?”

“Every man I have seen today who was not clearly a protestor or on his way to work at a non-profit like Save the Spotted Owl looks exactly the same,” Liz said wearily. “But yes, I see them.”

“Those smug bastards work at State, and they’re taunting me. They want me to be sure to know that they think I’m a…” and Jack’s voice dropped… “New York sissy.”

Six months ago, Liz would have pointed out that Jack was a New Yorker down to the bone, and it was really stupid to have a masculinity contest over who could wear their sport coat in the broiling summer heat longer.

“Yeah, well, they’re State,” Liz said with a brassy snort. “What do they know? They’re probably still looking for the WMDs.”

Jack actually chuckled at that. Poor guy. Liz needed to get him back to New York and soon, or the heatstroke would permanently screw him up.

“I’ve been reduced to a government appointee, Lemon,” Jack said. “This town can cut a great man off at the knees with its heat and conformist ways and macho displays of tomfoolery.”

Oh, boy, the weather had clearly gotten to Jack. He wasn’t even scheming or telling Liz how he was going to rise up and overcome. “We could arrange a coup d’etat. Find something that Kathy Geiss wants, and have her join our side?” Liz suggested half-heartedly. “I don’t know, you make plans. I just work on crazy instinct.”

“ _Never_ denigrate crazy instinct,” Jack said, shaking his finger at her. “It’s instinct that makes a man — or woman — great. Having the right crazy instinct allows you to invent things like the trivection oven. It makes you able to do things your mother would envy while trying to tear you down.”

“How is Colleen?” asked Liz.

Jack gave Liz a look. “Was that intended honestly?” he asked. “My loss of the chairmanship has given her a new lease on life at the expense of mine. Like a vampire of the soul.”

“I think you call that a succubus,” Liz said.

“A succubus is a demon who sucks out your soul via sex, Lemon,” Jack said. “Speaking of succubi, how many times has Dennis the Beeper King called you this week?”

“Eighteen,” Liz said.

“How many of his calls have you taken?” Jack asked.

“Eight,” Liz lied. It was ten, but whatever, eight and ten were practically the same number.

“That’s marginally less bullied than you were last week. Good work, Lemon,” Jack said. He was practically dripping, and Liz could not deal with the macho crap anymore. He’d have a heart attack again and Liz wouldn’t be happy if Jack had a heart attack in front of her.

So the crazy Liz who had jumped Devon Banks in an elevator seized Jack by the tie and started to take it off in front of him, his State Department rivals, and whoever.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“You look like you’re going to cook in front of me, and blerg, I cannot deal with a Jack-kebab, so,” Liz said, tugging and fussing until she finally beat the tie, “Take your jacket off. You can say I’m your Fatal Attraction-style stalker you can’t shake if the idiots in the Aviators ask. They probably still think that movie’s relevant and everything.”

Jack not only whipped off his jacket, he undid the first two buttons of his shirt. “You’re attractive enough to be my illicit Bohemian mistress by Washington standards,” he decided. “Rummy will taunt me endlessly, but from a distance, your child-bearing hips aren’t obvious. I may even earn a point or two among the boys’ club.”

If anyone else had said that to Liz, Liz would have slapped him, but instead, Liz sighed with relief. Jack was still there, under all the lunchtime drinking and manly jacket-wearing in August.

“This city is evil,” Liz said, draping the tie around her neck, because she didn’t know where else to put it.

“Wait until you have a good barbecue pork sandwich before you write it off completely. I know a place in Georgetown that will knock your socks off,” Jack promised.

Mmm, barbecue. “Then can we plot the overthrow of GE and Kathy Geiss’s reign of terror? I swear, yesterday she was lurking on the set and maybe left one of her toy cars,” Liz said. “I can’t tell if it’s a symbol of Devon planning to cancel us while we sleep, or what.”

“You’d have to convince me there was a point,” Jack said.

“The chance to mold Kenneth into your image before Devon gets his hooks into him?” Liz suggested with a shrug.

Jack almost said something, but then his face fell into a thoughtful expression. “Damn,” Jack said. “You’ve made a point, Lemon. We’ll need to discuss it over the heapin’ helps of sides and chess pie.”

“Is that good?” Liz asked. “The whole Southern cuisine thing eludes me.”

“You’ll see,” Jack said. “I’ll show you a good time in this fetid swamp before you flee for civilization, Lemon, I promise.”

Liz smiled. “It’d be more fun if you came back to New York with me,” she pointed out, fussing with Jack’s tie because blerg, Liz did not know how to ask a guy friend to move back home in a way that didn’t sound all girlfriendy, and Liz was not asking Jack to move back to New York for girlfriend reasons.

She just missed him, and Washington was clearly eating his soul, succubi-style, and Devon was sexually harassing Jenna to prove he wasn’t mega-gay and in love with Kenneth and Tracy totally didn’t respect Devon like he respected Jack and he was acting out and Liz was going to need help when they started filming again.

Everyone would be better off if Jack came home. Including Jack.

“Ask me the next time you come to visit,” said Jack. “I’ll take you to the Newseum and you can put a bouquet in front of the Russert exhibit. Or we can go hassle Chris Hitchens, the drunk limey bastard.”

Liz perked up. “Only if I can bring Jenna and Tracy for the Hitchens-harassment,” she said. “He weighed in on the whole Jenna controversy in Slate, the douche.”

“It’s a date,” Jack said lightly.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “I guess so.”

The worst thing about Washington, even worse than the heat, though probably not worse than the humidity, was that Jack wasn’t going to leave. Liz knew that; nothing less than Don Geiss’s miraculous recovery — or Don Geiss gasping out, “Jack Donaghy!” at the moment of his death, because Jack would litigate that constituted a binding verbal contract until GE was a smoldering ruin — was bringing him back.

And wow, that was an awkward silence. A _so now that we’re not working together, why are you coming to visit for the third time this summer, Liz Lemon?_ kind of silence. A _did it mean something when Jack said I was hot enough to be his New York mistress by Washington standards_ silence.

“I promised you pork with sauce,” Jack said.

“You did,” Liz said. “It’s air-conditioned, right?”

“Of course,” Jack said. “Do you mind if I call a car?”

Liz shook her head. “That’s the best idea ever. Well, except for Pete’s new idea for a show about like, showbiz husbands. That’s genius,” she said. “Have I told you about it?”

“I liked that idea better when it was called Entourage,” Jack said. “There’s an idea. Would you like to have a show at HBO? We could ruthlessly overtake the world of pay-cable together and grind NBC into the ground.”

“I’ve seen our ratings. It wouldn’t actually be hard,” Liz said. “And anything I made, you’d have to call the new Sex and the City. Which would make Jenna happy, but…”

Jack nodded. “It’s simply not the same without GE,” he said. “As I said. Ask me the next time you come to visit, Lemon.”

“I will,” Liz said.

“I know you will.”

“Good.”

“There’s a car,” Jack said.

Thank God, thought Liz. “Yay,” said Liz. “I’m hot.”

“What an odd thing to say,” Jack said. “Though if you’re hot, I’m about to melt.”

It was Washington, Liz thought as they half-raced to the waiting air-conditioning. It made him look at her funny. It made Liz think things like they wouldn’t be a half-bad long-distance couple, which was stupid. Because if there was a man that Liz Lemon knew better than to find attractive, it was the sweating sausage of an ex-boss next to her.

But oh, yes, Liz was going to get Jack back to New York and he’d be making her tear her hair out by Christmas.

That was a Liz Lemon guarantee.

Absolutely. Totally.

Stupid cesspool of politicians city. Not even the presence of Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer could save this dump, seriously.


End file.
